I’ll say it right now, Chip Foose is a hero of mine. I’ve heard, and read on-line lately, lots of disparaging remarks about his latest creation, the above Impala which took the Ridler award at AutoRama, but I’m not one of those distractors. This car is a masterpiece, and was in my head all day yesterday while I was in the shop working on my own two customs, Kim’s ’63 Riviera and my long-term ’59 T’bird project.

I don’t have the talent, vision, or admittedly the budget for a car like this, but I take inspiration for my own cars from Chip’s work, and this one spoke to me at a very visceral level. It’s absolutely stunning. The proportions are perfect, the car is radically modified but still looks like a Chevy Impala. Integrated, unified, classic yet modern/ Everything flows, beautifully detailed to a level that boggles my mind. It’s everything that I like about custom cars, and everything I’d like to be able to do.

I overheard some comments while looking at the car, and read afterwards, comments along the line of “The Ridler is bought, not earned”, “All Foose’s cars look the same.”, “F-ugly.”, and so on. My thoughts on looking at this (and LOTS of other cars at the show) were more along the “I could do that.”

In that light, while the images of the car are still fresh in my head, I’m going to get out to the shop and try to get the bodywork on my T’bird, and get busy with the Air-Ride system under the Riviera. Maybe someday a crowd of guys will stand around my car and mutter “It’s all about money”, “He just wrote the checks”, “I hate painted bumpers”, and occasionally, “I could do that.”

The restoration (or “fixing up”) of an old car is a matter of repairing and refurbishing all of the worn out and/or broken parts, making them work like they should, and then, depending on your own taste, making them look like new, or as close to new as makes you happy, again. It’s one step at a time. Today I made several big steps forward.

The Riviera I’m building for my wife had an issue with the passenger door glass, it flopped inwards when the door closed, didn’t fit right, and the power window motor was shot. Happily, I have an extra pair of doors, and robbed the spare door of the parts I needed. The window motor works fine, but sadly, the die-cast arm on the window regulator that was the cause of this floppy-ness was also broken on the donor door. Since I had an entire extra regulator, I cut one of the steel arms off it that happen to be exactly the same length as the broken die cast one, managed to save the shouldered rivet that makes the hinge pin that it pivots as the window goes up and down, and put it all back together. It works fine, and cost ZERO dollars.

I got the new “Southern-Air” A/C-heat unit mounted on the inside of the firewall too, and adapted the shiny new dash vents to the Riviera’s original housings, on each side of the dash, and the long narrow original one in the center of the console. The defroster tubes are also mounted temporarily, so I’ve go all done that I can do until I get the new console (sourced from the guy who bought the parts Riviera I sold) and start permanently putting the car together.

Next up, put some butyl duct-insulation (same stuff as “Dyna-Mat” but about a quarter of the price), on the floor and insulation on top of that. A buddy uses shiny mylar bubble wrap insulation in all his builds, so I’m going to use the same thing, with maybe a second layer of butyl duct insulation on top of that. I want the car quiet and cool.

After that, I spent some time sorting out the wiring harness, as I need to sort out the switched and constant hot feeds to wire the new ECM for the LS engine, and I got all the windows to go up and down. The drivers power seat needs some work to free up the mechanism, but the motor runs, so it should be repairable. The headlight, tail-light and wiper circuits all work, so I won’t have too much wiring to do, as the original wiring is in good shape.

I’m very happy with this afternoons work, I got a lot done, and made progress on several aspects of the build. As soon as I get my re-shaped oil pan and the air suspension stuff, the car can start going back together and get ready for paint!

The defroster plenum will get the tubes sealed in with my second favorite thing, duct tape.

Faithful readers will recall that last week I installed the shine new exhaust headers on the 5.3 Vortec after a little creative work with a touch and ball-peen hammer to clear the steering box and right side upper control arm. The engine is now setting on mounts tacked to the frame, the transmission crossmember is done, but before I weld the mounts permanently, I figured I’d better check to make sure the hood would indeed clear the (high mounted) alternator and very tall intake manifold.

I hung the core support and right front fender, and nervously sat the hood down. In order to have it set down all the way, I had to notch the hoods inner support panel over the alternator, and for good measure, I clearanced the alternator bolt boss on the housing about 1/4″ at the front. The result is an easy 1/2″ clearance between the alternator and hood skin. Hurrah!

Now, I can relax a bit, secure that I don’t have to buy a new, low-profile intake manifold and front accessory drive set up. I do have to get an air conditioner compressor mount, but that’s easy. Now I can pull the engine, install the new oil pan with it’s shallower rear sump, clean the frame and weld the mounts in for good.